Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit. We should not listen to those who like to affirm that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the tumult of the masses is truly close to madness.

-Alcuin
  Letter to Charlemagne.

   You were silly like us: your gift survived it all; 40 The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself; mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen.

-Auden,W(ystan) H(ugh)
  'In Memory of  W.B.Yeats', pt.2.

Of course, in an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness. But the pursuit of sanity can be a form of madness, too.

-Bellow, Saul
  Henderson The Rain King, ch.3.

   Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness on the brain. 226

-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
  'Christabel', pt.2.

It was a moment of madness for which I have subsequently paid a very, very heavy price.

-Davies, Ron(ald)
  Talking about the episode on Clapham common which led to his resignation as Welsh Secretary. Television interview, 30 Oct.

To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices.

-DeLillo, Don
  Owen Brademas. The Names, ch.5.

Much Madness is divinest Senseö To a discerning Eyeö Much Senseöthe starkest Madnessö

-Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth
c.1862  Complete Poems, no.435 (first published1890).

   Neat Marlowe, bathed in theThespian springs, Had in him those brave translunary things That the first poets had; his raptures were All air and fire, which made his verses clear, For that fine madness still he did retain Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.

-Drayton, Michael
  'To My Most Dearly Loved Henry Reynolds, Esquire, of Poets and Poesie'.

My love's a noble madness.

-Dryden,John
  Cleopatra to Iris.  All for Love, or The World Well Lost, act 2, sc.1.

Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bands divide.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.163^4.

If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness When everything is as it was in my childhood Violent, vivid and of infinite possibility.

-Eberhart, Richard Ghormley
  'If I Could Only Live at the Pitch That Is Near Madness'.

For the nineteenth century, the initial model of madness would be to believe oneself to be God, while for the preceding centuries it had been to deny God.

-Foucault, Michel
  Madness and Civilization.

A naked lunch is natural to us, we eat reality sandwiches. But allegories are so much lettuce. Don't hide the madness.

-Ginsberg, Allen
  'On Burroughs'  Work'.

Writing is a formof therapy; sometimes Iwonder howall these people who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation.

-Greene, (Henry) Graham
  Ways of Escape, ch.9.

'Tis thou, alone, who with thy mystic fan, Work'st more than Wisdom, Art, or Nature can, To rouse the sacred madness; and awake The frost-bound-blood, and spirits; and to make Them frantic with thy raptures, flashing through The soul, like lightning, and as active too.

-Herrick, Robert
  'His Fare-well to Sack'.

Fishing is undoubtedly a form of madness but, happily for the once-bitten, there is no cure.

-Douglas-Home, Baron
  Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Composing is not a profession. It is a maniaöa harmless madness.

-Honegger, Arthur
I Am a Composer.

We work in the darköwe do what we canöwe give what we have.Our doubt is in our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is madness.

-James, Henry
  Dencombe speaking of the artist.'The MiddleYears', in Scribner's Magazine, May.

O bom era ter uma intelige"  ncia e na‹  o entender. Era uma be"  n c° a‹  o estranha como a de ter loucura sem ser doida. Era um desinteresse manso em rela c° a‹  o a'  s coisas ditas do intelecto, uma do c° ura de estupidez. What was good was to have intelligence and yet not understand. It was a strange blessing like experiencing madness without being mad. It was a gentle lack of interest with respect to the so-called things of the intellect, a sweet stupidity.

-Lispector, Clarice
  Uma  Aprendizagem ou O Livro dos Prazeres, 'Luminesce"  ncia' (translated as  An  Apprenticeship or TheBook of Delights,1986).

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

-Melville, Herman
Moby Dick, ch.96.